|
The name of this language has its
origin in sâhils-awâhil, Arab term that designated the
East African coast and the islands, the region where this language
was born. Swahili exhibits a great difference with the rest of native
tongues: it is not actually an ethnic language; neither it is the
patrimony of a given tribe. Although Swahili is the native tongue
for the Bajun, Fundi, Ozi, Pate, Vumba, Mvita, Shela, Amu and Siyu,
what we call the Swahili people is really a community resulting
from mestization among the ancient Arabs and Persians, who reached
the coast starting from the 6th century, and the coastal Bantus
that had arrived nearly 1,000 years before from the inlands. The
fusion gave rise to a culture, a people and a language, which in
Kenya has seven dialects and three sub-dialects.
Specification of the date of the origins of Swahili (Kiswahili)
is not an easy task. It seems clear that the language was spoken
at the coast during the 13th century. Some authors propose a much
more ancient origin: in his work "Journey through the Erithraean
Sea", a greek trader named Diogene who visited the East African
coast in the year 110 A.D. told that the Arab traders who regularly
sailed the coast talked to the natives in their local language,
which could represent the first historical reference to Swahili.
Though it was initially transcribed in Arab writing, the origin
of Swahili lies on the Bantu language, as shown by its grammar and
syntax. Possibly, the absence of writing among the natives made
that the first written texts in Swahili adopted the Arab alphabet,
which reached the coast first. Afterwards, the language was enriched
with some Arab terms, possibly when the Swahili population started
reading the Koran. Shortly after, the Swahili succeeded as the common
language for the coastal trade. Along the centuries, Swahili has
adopted terms from other languages, such as Persian, Hindi, Portuguese,
English and German. The Portuguese influence during the domination
of the coast by this European country shows up today in other features
of Swahili culture, as in bullfighting variant that is still practiced
in the island of Pemba.
In 19th century, the European missionaries learnt Swahili in order
to communicate with the natives. Johann Ludwig Krapf, the missionary
who was the first European to describe Mount Kenya, authored the
first translation of the Bible to Swahili, and also wrote the first
Swahili dictionary and the first grammar. But the missionaries also
contributed to spread the Swahili to the natives in the inner lands
that spoke other languages. Afterwards, during the Colony days,
the European rulers made an effort to standardise Swahili. The result
of this attempt was the Kiswahili, or standard Swahili, taken from
the Kiunguja dialect which was native to the town of Zanzibar (Unguja),
which was the nucleus of the Swahili culture and cradle of the dialect
considered the purest. The Kiswahili is today national language
in Kenya and Tanzania.
The young urban people in Nairobi speak a peculiar dialect, a mixture
of English, Swahili and some ethnic tongues, which is known as Sheng.
Born in the city slums, Sheng has become a fashionable sign of modernity
and cosmopolitanism for the Kenyan youth. Sheng uses mainly the
Swahili grammar and syntax, but includes terms from other languages
that can vary depending on the different environments.
|
